SOAP star Jessie Wallace has fallen for a former crack addict musician who nearly died during his wild drug binges.

SOAP star Jessie Wallace has fallen for a former crack addict musician who nearly died during his wild drug binges.

The EastEnders actress is said to be “head over heels in love” with rocker Tim Arnold, godson of TV veteran June Brown. A pal said: “It’s early days but she is in to him.”

And the new romance has come as a relief for pals worried that Jessie would never recover from the humiliation of her wedding day split from Vince Morse.

She has emerged from the gloom with a smile on her face after finding love with Arnold, who nearly died while blowing £500 a week on drug binges.

A pal of the star, who dumped Morse, 50, after he sent steamy pictures of her to an ex-girlfriend, said: “It’s early days but you can see how much she’s into him.

“He is a thoroughly decent bloke, too, so it’s a great match.”

The 40-year-old actress has become inseparable from Tim, 36, since they met at the Soap Awards last month. He is the godson of Walford veteran June – Dot Cotton – and son of co-star Polly Perkins, who plays Dot’s sister Rose in the BBC show.

Jessie was spotted at his flat in London on Sunday where she dropped off a bag before they headed to a restaurant. Onlookers said they held hands and kissed. A day earlier, they were seen kissing in her car.

June is a long-time friend of Tim’s mum and she even funded a three-week trip to Thailand’s ­Thamkrabok monastery for ­treatment by monks to help beat his addiction.

June, 85, once said: “Tim had got to the point where all of us feared he might die. His skin wasn’t very good, his teeth were discoloured and his nature changed. He was always lying, trying to get money to feed his habit.”

She told how Tim’s life started to crumble as his addiction took its grip. June added: “It’s awful to be a mother watching your child fall apart and being powerless to stop it. Simple as that.

“He’d go to the studios during the day, pretending he was holding himself together, then at night, he roamed the streets begging.”

Tim, who was once in 90s Britpop band Jocasta, told how he got hooked on the killer drug when he lost his record deal. He said: “I had become a crack addict at the age of 19 but after several years, I knew I needed help to quit.

“I realised I was killing myself, or rather my soul. But I didn’t care. I remember smoking crack in front of my mother. I thought, ‘Why shouldn’t I? This is what I do with my life’.”

But Tim turned his life around and has been clean since 2003. He added: “I don’t want to be an addict again, it’s a horrible and lonely e­xistence.”

Jessie called off her £300,000 wedding to catering boss Morse last August after she found out the night before that he had sent graphic pictures of her to his ex Karen Short.

She fled to Crete on what should have been her honeymoon and took a six-month break from EastEnders, during which Vince went on ITV1’s This Morning to make a grovelling apology.

Jessie’s love life has had the sort of ups and downs soap scriptwriters would dream up.

When she started in Walford she was dating ex-criminal Paul Whitworth, who had been jailed for fraud. That romance ended after three years.

She fell for policeman Dave Morgan, 36, in 2007, the father of her seven-year-old daughter Tallulah. Jessie then started seeing American Andy Burton, 34, but they broke up when he went public on their relationship.